Married Part 46

"The thought of it makes me unhappy."

"But it doesn't make you unhappy to think of me cooking your dinner and attending to your children?"

This remark set him thinking.

He pondered the question during the whole of his tram journey to Brooklyn.

When he came home in the evening, he had done a good deal of thinking.

"Now, listen to me, my love," he began, "I've thought a lot about your position in the house and, of course, I am far from wis.h.i.+ng that you should be my servant. I think the best thing to do is this: You must look upon me as your boarder and I'll pay for myself. Then you'll be mistress in the house, and I'll pay you for my dinner."

"What do you mean?" asked his wife, a little uneasy.

"What I say. Let's pretend that you keep a boarding-house and that I'm your boarder. We'll only pretend it, of course."

"Very well! And what are you going to pay me?"

"Enough to prevent me from being under an obligation to you. It will improve my position, too, for then I shall not feel that I am kept out of kindness."

"Out of kindness?"

"Yes; you give me a dinner which is only half-cooked, and then you go on repeating that you are my servant, that is to say, that you are working yourself to death for me."

"What are you driving at?"

"Is three dollars a day enough for my board? Any boarding-house will take me for two."

"Three dollars ought to be plenty."

"Very well! Let's say a thousand dollars per annum. Here's the money in advance!"

He laid a bill on the table.

It was made out as follows:

Rent 500 dollars Nurse's wages 100 "

Cook's wages 150 "

Wife's maintenance 500 "

Wife's pin money 500 "

Nurse's maintenance 300 "

Cook's maintenance 300 "

Children's maintenance 700 "

Children's clothes 500 "

Wood, light, a.s.sistance 500 "

4.500 dollars

"Divide this sum by two, since we share expenses equally, that leaves 2025 dollars. Deduct my thousand dollars and give me 1025 dollars. If you have got the money by you, all the better."

"Share expenses equally?" was all the wife could say. "Do you expect me to pay you, then?"

"Yes, of course, if we are to be on a footing of equality. I pay for half of your and the children's support. Or do you want me to pay the whole? Very well, that would mean that I should have to pay you 4050 dollars plus 1000 dollars for my board. But I pay separately for rent, food, light, wood and servants' wages. What do I get for my three dollars a day for board? The preparation of the food? Nothing else but that for 4050 dollars? Now, if I subtract really half of this sum, that is to say, my share of the expenses, 2025 dollars, then the preparation of my food costs me 2025 dollars. But I have already paid the cook for doing it; how, then, can I be expected to pay 2025 dollars, plus 1000 dollars for food?"

"I don't know."

"Neither do I. But I know that I owe you nothing after paying for the whole of your support, the children's support and the servants'

support; the servants who do your work, which, in your opinion, is equal, or superior, to mine. But even if your work should really be worth more, you must remember that you have another five hundred dollars in addition to the household expenses, while I have nothing."

"I repeat that I don't understand your figures!"

"Neither do I. Perhaps we had better abandon the idea of the boarding-house. Let's put down the debit and credit of the establishment. Here's the account, if you'd like to see it."

To Mrs. Blackwood for a.s.sistance in the house, and to Mrs. Blackwood's cook and nursemaid:

Rent and maintenance 1000 dollars Clothes 500 "

Amus.e.m.e.nts 100 "

Pin money (by cash) 500 "

Her children's maintenance 1200 "

Her children's education 600 "

On account of the maids who do her work 850 "

4570 dollars

Paid M. Blackwood, _Wharfinger_

"Oh! It's too bad of you to worry your wife with bills!"

"With counter-bills! And even that one you need not pay, for I pay all bills."

The wife crumpled up the paper.

"Am I to pay for your children's education, too?"

"No, I will, and I shall, and I will also pay for your children's education. You shall not pay one single farthing for mine. Is that being on a footing of equality? But I shall deduct the sum for the maintenance of my children and servants: then you will still have 2100 dollars for the a.s.sistance you give to my servants. Do you want any more bills?"

She wanted no more; never again.

THE BREADWINNER

He wakes up in the morning from evil dreams of bills which have become due and copy which has not been delivered. His hair is damp with cold perspiration, and his cheeks tremble as he dresses himself. He listens to the chirruping of the children in the next room and plunges his burning face into cold water. He drinks the coffee which he has made himself, so as not to disturb the nursery maid at the early hour of eight o'clock. Then he makes his bed, brushes his clothes, and sits down to write.

The fever attacks him, the fever which is to create hallucinations of rooms he has never seen, landscapes which never existed, people whose names cannot be found in the directory. He sits at his writing table in mortal anguish. His thoughts must be clear, pregnant and picturesque, his writing legible, the story dramatic; the interest must never abate, the metaphors must be striking, the dialogue brilliant. The faces of those automata, the public, whose brains he is to wind up, are grinning at him; the critics whose good-will he must enlist, stare at him through the spectacles of envy; he is haunted by the gloomy face of the publisher, which it is his task to brighten. He sees the jurymen sitting round the black table in the centre of which lies a Bible; he hears the sound of the opening of prison doors behind which free-thinkers are suffering for the crime of having thought bold thoughts for the benefit of the sluggards; he listens to the noiseless footfall of the hotel porter who is coming with the bill....

And all the while the fever is raging and his pen flies, flies over the paper without a moment's delay at the vision of publisher or jurymen, leaving in its track red lines as of congealed blood which slowly turn to black.